Very purple!

This to most people is just yet another of the ubiquitous Paperchase outlets, but this is something more than that. For this is Carlisle and this is the first appearance of the chain. It takes a long time for things to get this far north. I love Paperchase – I know it’s expensive, in fact very expensive, but they sell such lovely things and I have always been a pushover for beautiful stationery. Until now, I have had to wait until I got to a ‘real city’ in order to browse through the delicious stuff, now we have one of our own – so new it is not even open yet.
 
It is also very interesting, as this building on English Street is Grade II listed. It dates from the 18th century and was originally built as a house for a family of the newly-wealthy merchants and industrialists of Carlisle. It was turned into a shop in 1816.  Made of red sandstone with a green slate roof, you can see the brackets, which would have originally held a canopy. This old picture shows it as a shop (on the right) with a canopy in a row of others by the market square. The marks between the windows could be where the original shop signs would have been or maybe they show how the windows have been altered.
   
The interesting thing is that the shop was, from 1816 to well into the 1960s, Thurnams, a well-known Carlisle firm of stationers and printers.  So, after going through several changes since then, it is now returning to its roots as a stationer, a very different kind of stationer I suspect though! And I’m really not sure about the purple!!